Tag Archives: The Roar of Our Stars

This is has been such a long day. It sucks to be an adult, let me tell you. So… I’m going to rewrite two of my book reviews in the voice of Vivane, from that thing I did once. She’s basically a bundle of cursing, so skip this if foul language really bothers you.

aqualass: That’s your question? heheh j/k Yeah I remember.
Do you need me to ask them to do some SCIENCE for you? ;)

cheydostudio: Haha, no science, thanks.
But I was wondering how they got posted to that island you guys live on.
It sounds like the kind of thing I want to do right now.
Or need to do. Ugh.

aqualass: i really dunno about that
Sorry
How come your thinkign about this stuff?

cheydostudio: Sigh. No particular reason.
Well, not one that’s short.

aqualass: Sorry I can’t stay longer.
Email me?

cheydostudio: That’s a good idea.
Maybe I can try to catch Wen online, too.

aqualass: heh, hopefully when ou do he’ll be in a good mood.

cheydostudio: Oh be nice. P:

~

I decided to make some changes to Delia and let Aronshy get closer to what she used to be, taking those elements from Delia that really cannot exist outside of whoever gets the island and its supernaturalness.

What helped was remembering that Delia’s username, cheydostudio, comes from her last name (Cheydo, derp) and the fact that she worked for her parents’ art studio. She was originally a commercial artist with a bit of a disgruntled side, but mostly cheerful and dependable.

One reason for this test-type post was to test out their personalities put into the new-ish situations. I don’t think they’ve changed a lot, but then, it’s been a while since I wrote any of them. The easiest was always Vivane, but I digress. Another reason to test was to see how the chats would look in a prose situation.

Writing it here in my blog, it feels too much like the chat pngs and prosies, since that’s what I was moving on to after the chat concluded. Even before I started testing a proper prose bit, it just felt like when I was doing things the way I did. Writing it all out with the understanding that I’d fire up Photoshop when the words were done.

That doesn’t feel right for some reason. If it looks the same, then who’s to say that I won’t just keep doing it the same minus graphics, and the prose will remain prosie and not extend to a real/full chapter?

Still have some work to do, I guess. It’s hard to just discount the chats aspect entirely. It also doesn’t strike me as a good idea to treat them like a phone conversation or the like in narrative.

The cast as I considered it yesterday still seems the right way to go. Certainly there’s no need for new characters. Hardly an anticipated danger, that. But Wen and Aronshy still present a bit of a problem. The latter much more than the former.

Upon consideration, Wen is pretty much all right the way he was. He had a concrete situation: office worker with poor social skills, of which he is painfully aware, and a very short temper that he’d like to improve but can’t seem to manage it. His relationship with Carlos fits the active/passive modus well, and doesn’t really need to change much. His relationships with the others will take more thought.

Originally, they did all know each other, just a network of internet friends of varying levels of intimacy. Dunno if that’ll carry through.

I think I talked about my initial plans for Aronshy are nicely represented by her username, aqualass. It’s still hard to untangle her and Delia, which is what’s tripping me up. Delia lives on an island that’s full of whimsy and the unknown, and Aronshy Original Flavour lived on an island surrounded by mermaids. I don’t know if this would have made her active, or if she would have been like Delia, thinking that it’s all perfectly normal and remaining largely unaware of anything strange.

Aronshy’s island was deserted, and she lived there with ghosts and a giant statue. I’d love to bring all of that back, but it’s just way too close to Delia’s situation to work. In comparing the two and deciding who lives and who dies (so to speak), I can never come up with the same answer twice. In Delia’s case, I’ve already written it that way, and I can’t picture her any other way. I also can’t imagine not having her, considering the way she related so easily to absolutely everyone. She didn’t pair off, even with Button, because she worked with everyone. I think the only one she didn’t connect terribly well with was Ronit, and that’s because they’re a little too alike (in the way that people are; they made each other uncomfortable).

But I like Aronshy better in a whimsical setting. It suits her better, and she’d be more likely to be the active in a pair with Delia. The latter’s tendency to resist the Pair notwithstanding.

Currently considered pairs:

Vivane / Ronit

Carlos / Wen

Aronshy / Delia

I guess I could stick Aronshy in a different place that still allows for mermaids, ghosts, and a giant statue. Maybe a forest? Then there could also be pixies. Or centaurs. Heh, I could overload the fantasy for humour’s sake. …for some reason, I keep wanting to call them murmurmaids and make them have something to do with the wind instead of water. Sylph-like.

Anybody remember The Roar of Our Stars? If not, it’s right up there with its own page on the blog. I’m tempted to make a “go read it, I’ll wait” joke, but those jokes are kind of stupid, so I’d rather not.

Like many things, this project sort of fell by the wayside when I got pregnant. I still like it. What I had done, what I had planned, the characters and the story (such as it was), all that stuff. I don’t really feel like picking it back up the way it was, though. In the last post I wrote with the TRoOS tag, I mentioned that the chats and prosies were starting to divorce themselves.

So maybe I could try a novel-y version?

I know, I haven’t been able to get back on the wagon properly, again since finding out I was pregnant. And now that Owen is here, he’s more demanding than I tend to realise/remember and there’s also the fact that I need to sleep and exercise. Bevy of health stuff that involves pills and creams. This could well be me talking without anything to back it up again. But I have to try, don’t I?

Anyway, the question here is not just how to do it (which should be interesting to figure out) but which characters will survive the transition from the way TRoOS initially worked, to a novel form. There are ten characters, and maybe not all of them are actually necessary. I just liked them, and I needed as many pairs as I wanted to write for the first round. Ten is too many for a novel, though.

Not that I’ll get an answer (did anyone read TRoOS?), but who should hang on for a novel attempt? There are a couple that I know will have to be in it, either because they’re the most integral to my intentions or I like them a lot. Many of the integral characters are either actively involved with the existence of monsters or have some kind of supernatural leanings or connection.

Delia was the first character I wrote anything with, and although she isn’t aware of monsters, she does have supernatural entanglements. The duller or less developed characters, like Button and Persephone, probably won’t make the cut. Granted, they did have something to offer originally–Button’s surety that he had something important to do, and Persephone’s value hidden in a possibly put-on ditzy nature–but those aren’t super important things.

There are a few inherent pairs, pretty much set up by the first round. If Persephone doesn’t make it, then Travis probably won’t either. But Carlos and Wen, another inherent pair, won’t likely protect the other from being left out. Carlos is an active (for want of a better term), but Wen falls under the category of ‘less developed’ and tended to play off of Carlos a little too much. He didn’t do enough on his own. But we’ll see. Wen could well be an important foil for Carlos, and with some more thought, could develop to the level he needs to reach.

Kaapo and Aronshy, perhaps a pair, perhaps not, are safely superfluous. I think this happened because they became a bit of a pair, while I did not have enough actives. And two passives do not a strong monster plot link make. Another problem is that at the outset, and for some time after, I mixed up Delia and Aronshy, so the latter’s character got a bit lost. Maybe I could re-make Aronshy with a more distinct background and personality, or merge the two characters and pick which name to use.

Of course, Vivane is pretty much the flagship character. Or battleship cruiser. It’s hard to tell with her. And Ronit is an excellent passive to make up the other half of that pair. Hmm. Thinking about all these pairs, maybe I ought to make that a thing.

I just started thinking about this last night, so it’s all up in the air and entirely cloud-thinking at the moment. I don’t know if I’ll keep the chat aspect at all, but I still love the usernames. Shillelaghins. Haw.

Would chats be annoying in prose? I’m inclined to think so, but I dunno.

It’s pretty early for me (although on the asynchronous internet, that almost doesn’t mean anything, does it?), and I’m glad. I may get up at 4 o’clock every day from now on, if it means that I will feel the way I do right now.

I’m actually able to type!

I’m also thinking clearer, which is nice. Although I feel inexplicably boring whenever I talk about my life–that, I think, is just part of how I’ve always thought.

The funny thing I realised has to do with The Roar of Our Stars. I haven’t been able to write anything since my last homework thing, but I have been planning out the next round. I think I’m so hard-wired for prose that I don’t format myself too well to TRoOS sometimes. The prosies have gotten better and have kind of been calling to separate from the chats.

Several of the characters are away from computers, so I’m trying to get them hooked up with ways to keep chatting even while away (or in Delia’s case, with her computer destroyed). Even with that, I have to pretty much skip some of what could be good parts because of where I leave off with cliffhangers in the prose accompaniment for the next time they chat.

Hopefully, I can embrace it and get another one done soon. I have no idea where the story is going or where it’ll end, and sometimes I worry about that. Maybe I should have just done a webcomic. Heh.